No sunset views?

We've shown versions of this photo plenty of times - it's the view from our great room towards Elk Mountain -

(picture taken moments ago)

But last night as the sun was probably setting, the same view caught my eye.  With the orange-red glow, it looked like fall had come back to that west facing slope in the middle of this same view out the window.

 

 

An afternoon of smoke eating for Norris

Yesterday was a busy afternoon for the RCFD.  While other members of the department were fighting other fires and running medical calls, Norris spent several hours helping to control an intentional pasture fire that got out of control when the wind changed directions.  Once the fire took off, it headed for several homes up the ridge from the pasture.  As you can see in the photo below, it was a very smoky fire, which made it hard to always see where the front edge of the fire was.

 The good news was the pasture grass was mostly green and didn't burn, but the local Broom Sage weed (which is oily and burns intensely) was dry and the fire leaped between islands of the Broom Sage.  The plants were only about 18 inches high, but gave off a lot of heat as they burned.

The photo below shows an area where the fire started to approach some houses.  This is just a small part of the area that burned, but it is the area closest to the houses.  The house to the far right that is just in the framing stage of construction would have probably been good tinder if the fire had gotten that far.  The straw colored plants mixed in with the grass are the Broom Sage.

A new kind of neighbor cruises by

Since we stopped feeding the birds, we have not seen any bears in our yard.  But this morning I spotted a long white-tipped red tail as it headed under our deck.    The fox paused briefly under the front edge of the deck then headed for our steps and went down to cross the front yard. All we could see at that point was its back but Norris did snap this profile photo - no time to put on the telephoto lens.

 

The fox turned left at the cul de sac and followed the road down the hill out of view.

The bears and turkeys use the same route, though the turkeys aren't as deliberate about it.

More Shape Note Singing

After the lecture on Thursday, a member of the audience stood up and announced there would be a singing at the Center Community Center on Saturday, so thinking we'd like to hear the authentic version, we went for an hour or so this morning.  The weather was a little scary, so the Singing was not very well attended. With so few voices there, I was persuaded to participate.  Norris got a couple of videos - this short clip shows us sitting in the traditional square.  The woman to the left is singing the high-soprano part, while those with their backs to us are singing the tenor, melody line.  Cheryl is singing alto - happily between two very strong and knowledgeable singers.

That was just a short clip to set the stage.  This next hymn went a little more smoothly overall so it's a longer clip from a different angle. The man visible over the singer in the blanket's shoulder is Don Wiley who stood up at the lecture and invited everyone to come to the singing.

Singing in this style was brand new to me and very challenging. It has been many years since I tried to sing, other than the occasional hymn or Christmas Carol.  It was hard work!

House fire last weekend

Some good photographs of a house fire in Reems Creek last Sunday.  A retired firefigher saw the column of smoke and got some pictures of a house blazing away on a hillside before the first firetrucks arrived.

In the photo below, the red taillights to the left side are the first arriving firetruck making it's way up the steep driveway.  You can click on the photo for a larger view.

There was only room for one firetruck the top of the driveway, so while the firefighters on the first truck were  putting the first water on the fire from their on-board 1000 gallon tank, other firefighters were pulling 600 feet of 4 inch supply line hose down the mountain to set up a water supply at a flat spot lower down the slope.  In the photo below you can see the smoke is turning to steam as water is hitting the fire while the firefighters on the two trucks in the lower left are sitting up a portable water tank to facilitate pumping additional water up the driveway to the first engine.  Norris was driving the second engine to arrive (the red truck on the lower left) and was assisted by firemen from Weaverville (the white tanker) in getting the water supply in operation.  The first arriving engine used up all of their on-board water, but were only out of water for a few seconds before the water being pumped up the driveway from the water supply point reached them.  

This was a cell photo picture that Norris took of the water supply point.  For 6 hours, Norris ran the pump panel on the truck in the background, while a steady stream of tankers shuttled in water to dump into the portable supply tank.  Altogether, 8000 gallons were dumped into the tank and pumped up the hill.

Since Norris was stuck at his position 600 feet from the fire, he never got close to the actual fire while it was burning.  The photo below was taken by a fireman after the main body of fire had been knocked down and mop-up operations were starting.

The next morning, fire investigators returned for a more thorough search for the cause of the fire.  You can see the roof has collapsed on this end of the house.  The floor had also burned through in a number of points.  The preliminary finding was that the fire had started in the dryer.  Looks pretty bad on this end of the house...

but in the this photo, you can see that aggressive interior firefighting prevented the fire from advancing beyond what was already burning when the FD arrived.  Although the back end of the house suffered smoke and water damage, it didn't burn and some of the contents were salvageable.